Duplicates when both bank and mortgage accounts are linked

Hi,

I couldn’t find this question asked/answered elsewhere in this forum but apologies if it’s a dupe.

I have linked both the bank account that pays the mortgage, and the mortgage account itself for a particular property. Stessa does its awesome work in reading transactions from the mortgage provider and splitting them up into principal/interest/whatever. It also creates a transaction for the debit from my bank account that pays this mortgage bill, so in the rolled up view it thinks I’ve paid 2x what I really have.

The obvious thing to do is to go and manually delete the bank account transactions and keep the mortgage account transactions. Totally happy to do that but was wondering if there is a more elegant solution to this?

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I ended up deleting the mortgage account instead, since I have multiple rental properties coming to the same checking account.

@edward @brayna.properties The best practice here is definitely to leave both accounts connected. Stessa should automatically categorize the bank side of these payments to “Transfers.” That will allow you to track them without impacting financial reporting, etc.

In the rare instance when the numbers don’t add up exactly or there are other complications, please open a 1:1 support conversation by clicking on the blue circle once you’re logged in.

We’ll take a closer look at your mortgage payments situation and get it cleaned up for you going forward.

If a Mortgage Payment is a “transfer” on the bank side of things why does it show up under Mortgage & Loan Category instead of Transfer?

Should “transfer” be chosen without a subcategory?

Stessa will only auto-categorize the bank side of a mortgage payment if there’s also a matching payment showing up from a connected loan account. The top-level “Transfers” bucket is essentially just a parking spot for the transaction so you can track it without it creating a duplicate expense on your reporting.

If you don’t have a matching loan account connection, the bank mortgage payment isn’t a duplicate, so it will remain categorized under Mortgages & Loans. Hope that helps.

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Just so I’m clear…
When the mortgage payment comes in from the loan account connection, I split it into PI/escrow. Since that split transaction doesn’t show the total bill amount anywhere, the bank side of the mortgage payment will never auto categorize.

When would Mortgage Payment ever get used? Only if you don’t split out PI/escrow?

Devin, thanks that clears it up for me. One question or maybe a new feature is that the split principal/interest/escrow can be split further to principal/interest/escrow taxes/escrow insurance. These categories already exist, just not in the mortgage split.

I just had the same situation. My United Wholesale Mortgage loans get pulled in from that account and are automatically split into mortgage principal and then the mortgage payment (no subcategory - for interest and escrow). The mortgage payments from my bank account get pulled in as mortgage payments (no subcategory - as single payments). So I’m classifying those as transfers (no subcategory). If UWM didn’t auto classify the actual properties, I’d probably just delete that account because I have 6 UWM mortgages so it would be very difficult to make sense of the 12 corresponding transactions.

Hope that helps for others.

I’m not sure I understand the “auto-categorize the bank side of a mortgage payment” comment you’ve made? I’m still struggling with the same problem that the bank side of the mortgage (deducted from the account) and the mortgage loan are both showing up so in Oct, Nov, Dec for instance it appears that my mortgage outflows are double what they actually are.

Are you suggesting that I enter all the bank transactions as “transfers”??

That’s good to know! Thanks!

yes that is what I do. The mortgage company transactions show the mortgage payments. The challenge that us still there for me is the escrow part.